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Lubya a palestinian demolished Village in Galilee Memory-History-Culture-Identity Mahmoud Issa Preface


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A few brave men from the village later returned to take what they could. Abu Majid returned to the village with two other Lubyans in an attempt to deceive Jewish forces by suggesting that there was still resistance in the village. Abu Majid hoped that a truce was on the way and that his actions could perhaps save the village. “The village had been empty for three days when I came from Nimrin, so I fired a few shots to show the Jews that we were still there. We left on Friday believing that the truce would start the following Monday.”

“Sheikha, an old woman from Lubya, saw me in your house [speaking to the interviewer], and I spoke to her as a Jew. I asked her: ‘fein balad? (Where is the village?)’ She answered, 'rahat yamma (It’s gone), my child, if you want to kill me, kill me here and now.’ She then asked for water and we left her in my grandfather’s house. I took a sheep with me and gave it later to S’ood al-‘Ayid who stayed in the Golan with his cattle. Khadiji found the blind Zahiyyi, the grandmother of Hamad, and accompanied her out of the village, but refused the request of the handicapped Harbi to accompany them because she couldn’t walk. Zahiyyi died later in Damascus.”


“I left alone, for I had volunteered for guard duty at that time. We were positioned about one kilometre from the village to guard its eastern side, but when I returned to the village, I realised that it was empty, so we left to Nimrin. The artillery was bombing Lubya constantly, so I went back there with Husayn al-Mahmoud and Abu Zaki, the mukhtar of al-Hajajwi, followed us. We went in to collect a few things from our houses. I took a bed cover, a new blanket, and a sheep that was tied in front of one of the houses. My friend took a radio. A handicapped woman met us but did not recognise us. She thought that we were with the Jewish forces. She asked us to kill her: ‘tokhooni’ (Shoot me), but we couldn’t help her out. We left her with her daughter because we couldn’t carry her out.”
“We left again to Nimrin, but then I asked my friend to return back to the village to fire a few bullets in the air to give the impression to the Jewish forces that the village was still resisting. This was on Saturday, and there was a rumour that a cease-fire would start the coming Monday. On Sunday, I myself tried to re-enter the village, but on my way there met Husayn Ismail al-Hamza who told me that the Jews were already in Biarit al-Khan on the Tiberias side of the village. ‘Return from where you came,’ he warned, and we ran together until we reached Nimrin.”
In 1950 Abu Khalid crossed the borders from Lebanon with two friends in order to visit Lubya. They slept there one night, searching in the ruins of their homes hoping to find a few precious things that they had hid before the attack on their village. Nothing was found, only a village dog who was still living amid the ruins. “We used to call the dog Bobi. We thought that he was going mad. He ran from the north to the south of the village and then stopped beside us. He was left alone there with the handicapped people. The moment we arrived in Lubya, Bobi knew directly his owner Muhammad Ali Ismael, who came with me. He stayed with us until we left Lubya in the morning. He accompanied us until the borders with Nimrin. Even the dog didn’t want to leave his place.”
While sleeping that one night in Lubya, he heard the singing voice of a bird called al-Kata moving freely from place to place. The songbird inspired Abu Khalid to write the following two lines of poetry. The poem is like the emotional love story of the Arabic poet Kais, sometimes called Majnoon Laila (Laila’s fool) because of his deep love for a woman named Laila.


Asrub al-Kata Hal Man Ya’irni Janah’uhu

La’alli Ila Man Hawaytu Ateeru

Wallati Lam Ta’irni Janah’uha

Fa’ayshun Bitayrin waljanah’kaseeru


Who could lend me the wings of al-katta

To visit those whom I love

None will lend me the wings

to fly free, because the wings are broken.



“People should not leave their homes. It was a stupid decision to leave our homeland,” Nayif Hassan told me. “The Tatars arrived in Baghdad and burned everything down, but in the end they were defeated in Beisan. No meeting was held between the mukhtars of Lubya to decide whether to stay or not. Arab radio broadcasts helped the enemy indirectly when they began speaking about the Dayr Yasin massacre and how women were made to walk naked in the streets. What did they get in Baalbek compared to what they lost back home? Lubya was feeding them gold.”



Chapter Nine

Life in Exile




We are here near there, the tent has thirty doors

We are here a place between the pepples and the shadows

A place for a voice

Mahmoud Darwish



Whether Lubyans live in Arab countries – Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Mandate Palestine, or in Europe – Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, or Greece – all share a common experience – exile. Exile prolongs and enlarges the experience of the Nakba. Exile has become a source of collective identity for Palestinians everywhere, the majority of whom are refugees and internally displaced persons. “My uncle wept continuously after we left Lubya and died a year later in 1949 without having had the opportunity to see his village again,” said Um Tal'at.
The experience of 1948 was followed by further waves of displacement: from the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967; from Jordan in the 1970s; from Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s, including the infamous massacres in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps of Beirut; from Kuwait in 1991; from Libya in 1996; from the West Bank and Gaza Strip again during the first and second Palestinian uprisings (intifada); and, from Iraq in 2003. As Abu Hassan Hajjo said to me, “The story of the Palestinians is like a snake, it never ends.”
Like the hundreds of other Palestinian villages destroyed during and after the 1948 war, Lubya was ‘recreated’ in Palestinian refugee camps spread across the Middle East and in other far-flung places of exile. Wavel and ‘Ayn al-Hilwe refugee camps in Lebanon, Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria, Baqa’a refugee camp in Jordan, and later the suburbs of Berlin, Copenhagen, and Stockholm all became temporary ‘substitutes’ for Lubya. There Lubyans set up societies and clubs to deal with the serious and urgent problems of life in exile.
Lubyans played an active role in the modern revolution, which began in the 1960s, and the struggle to return home. Like most refugees, village identity, which remained strong, was subsumed within the larger construct of the nation, as represented through the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Ongoing exile, however, has forced many Lubyans to confront practical and existential questions of integration. In this context, religion has assumed a greater role. Today there are some 40,000 Lubyans living in twenty-three different countries in exile. Past memories of the village history, social relations, and cultural life are interwoven with the hardships of present lives in the camps and in the suburbs of European cities.

Early experiences of exile
When I asked elderly Lubyans about their early experiences of exile, the complexion of their faces gradually became bitter and sad. Only Abu Majid, managed to tell the story of his long exile with a sense of humor. Most shared stories about the different stations of exile in the weeks, months and years following their exodus from Lubya. Many ended up in temporary makeshift shelters assuming that after the war ended they would return to their homes and villages in Palestine. A large number of refugees from Lubya ended up in Lebanon and Syria, which provided the closest place for safe refuge from the war.
“The majority of the Lubyans here came via ‘Anjar village,” said Ghassan Said (Abu Muhammad)174, who is now living in Burj al-Shamali camp in Lebanon. “‘Anjar became a staging post before the Lubyans were redistributed by the Lebanese authorities to various parts of the country in the aftermath of the Nakba in 1948.” Others like Ahmad Hassan Ibrahim175 and his family journeyed first to Syria “and then to ‘Anjar in Lebanon, before finally settling in the refugee camp of Burj al-Shamali in the south of the country.”
For others 'Anjar was a stopping point on the way to Syria. Amina Ali Ismael and her family arrived in Bint Imjbail five days after crossing the border into south Lebanon. “We were about twenty-five people in all and some of our children were sick with typhus, so a doctor came and took a few of us to Beirut. We then went on to ‘Anjar, in the Beqaa’ valley and stayed there two more months. Then we heard that Damascus was a better place to stay, so we left for Damascus.”
“From there we went to Aleppo where we stayed for two more months in the Nairab refugee camp. Then we were moved to al-Ziib camp where there were problems with water. Then we went to al-Sifri and stayed there for five to six months. We returned again to Baalbek in Lebanon to be with my father Muhammad Khalil, and stayed there for twenty-five days. Finally, my brother came and convinced us to move with him to ‘Anjar, which was about thirty-five kms from Baalbek, and we stayed there for seven years.”
Other refugees from Lubya, like Abu Tal'at and his family, ended up in Jordan. “I came with my father from Lebanon,” recounted Abu Tal'at. “The Arab Higher Committee decided to send us to the muhajariin (displaced) camp in Syria, but my father refused. He came here to be near to Lubya when we would return.” Um Tal'at's memory of the journey was much more detailed. “My uncle Mahmoud Husayn suggested that we move to Nu’aimi [a village near Irbid where Samadi families are still living] in Jordan where there were people who knew us and would care for us since they used to visit us in Lubya.”
“Abu Tal’at, however, took us to Beirut in a bus. That night we had to sleep in a garage because King Faysal was due to arrive in Beirut. Anyone wishing to take a bath had to pay one shilling. Later on, we went to ‘Anjar in eastern Lebanon where we met people from Armenia. We could not travel to Damascus the normal way because we had no passports so we crossed the borders illegally. When we arrived there my aunt began to sing: ‘assalihya ‘assaliyha, ‘asham il’aliyyi rayiha (I am heading towards Salihiya and the highly respected al-Sham). The others with us began to shout at her, ‘This is no time for singing!’ Again, we slept in a garage in Damascus and people came to see us with baklawa (sweet cakes).”
“Since my husband was active in the revolution, he thought that the Arab Higher Committee would facilitate our travel to Jordan, but that was not the case. We managed on our own to find a bus that drove across the Jordanian border at Ramtha. We were hungry and wanted bread but we could not find any. Later on, however, the people of Ramtha gave us two loaves. We finally reached Irbid that same day and slept in al-Bayadir area, which is now known as Cinema Street. That first night in Jordan, I could still continuously hear the sound of the airplanes.”
Only a very few Lubyans ended up staying in villages close to Lubya that were eventually incorporated into the new state of Israel. This included a number of the elderly, sick and disabled people from the village. Lubyans I interviewed remember the following people who stayed behind after 1948: a handicapped woman named Harbi, Sheikha al-Kanbar, a sick and bed-ridden man named Salem al-Shabkoni, an elderly woman named Zahra al-’Ammash, Ammoni al-’Ali who was the wife of ‘Odeh al-Ali, and, the blind daughter of Ismael al-Theeb.
Most of those who stayed behind, like the family of Abu Hassan Hajjo176, found shelter with extended family. Abu Hassan accompanied me to Lubya while shooting the documentary film about the village. In 1948 he left Lubya with his wife and son Nayif, who was only forty days old at the time. “Because my mother is from Dayr Hanna and my wife was sick I chose to stay here,” he said. “In Dayr Hanna we were 150 refugees from different villages, but the story of the Palestinians is like the snake story that never ends. We stayed two years with friends and were able to go back secretly to Lubya to collect household items and clothes that we had hidden in the caves before we left the village in 1948.”
Issa Lubani was another Lubyan who stayed behind to care for a sick member of his family. He began to weep as he told me the tragic story of his brother. “In 1948 my brother became very sick. My uncle suggested putting him in the hospital. I refused to leave with the family for Lebanon and Syria. That is why I am still here. I stayed beside my brother in the hospital. I accepted the advice of the doctors to give him the injection which hastened his death. I feel guilty about him. Normal medicine nowadays could have saved his life.”
Abu Muhammad Kilani's family left the village during the war but then decided to try to return to the Galilee rather than stay in Lebanon. Abu Muhammad had been blind since he was a small child and was a young man of sixteen when he left Lubya in 1948. He began to speak before I even had the chance to ask him any questions. “First we went to Nimrin and stayed for three days with Ahmad Suleiman (Abu Zaki). Then we moved to al-Battof Plain where we joined people already there from different places. The village of al-Bi’ni was already occupied, and a friend of my father’s from 'Arrabi [about twenty kms from Lubya] from the Shalash family, came with a camel and helped us move there.”
“The Arab Salvation Army was still in 'Arrabi, but did not stay for much longer. Then the Israeli army occupied the rest of the country right up to the Lebanese border in 1948. My uncles Ahmad Yousef and Nimir Saleh (Abu Lutuf) returned from Lebanon to take us there. They said to my father: ‘We brought goods from Lebanon to sell in al-Maghar and afterwards we will take you back with us to Lebanon.’ My father was very hesitant and told them: ‘My life will not be better than that of the people over here. I will not go with you to Lebanon.’ He tore up the special permit that he had received that morning and again said to my uncles: ‘If the people here die, I will die with them. If they live, I will live with them.’ Two years later, on 4 March 1950, my father passed away amid a season of heavy snowfall.”
For those Lubyans who found refuge in Lebanon, the conditions were particularly harsh, despite assistance provided by the Red Crescent, the International Red Cross, and later on by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA)177. In the south of the country, Ghassan Said remembered the “tents through which rainwater used to penetrate.” Yousef Issa lost his first wife and son in the camp in Baalbek where they were given shelter “in military camps [Wavel and Ghoro178] named after English and French generals.”
“The long corridors of the military building in which we were kept were divided by curtains into cubicles in which individual families were placed,” said Yousef. “It was the worst winter in many years, with severe cold and snow. There was no medicine to cure even the simple illnesses. I remember that once an English nurse from the Red Cross gave me a few tablets for something, but to no avail. Many children died because of the lack of blankets and other means of keeping warm.”
The harsh conditions were exacerbated by the fact that amid the panic and chaos of war, most refugees left their villages with few possessions, assuming that they would only be gone for a matter of a few days or weeks at most. Many Lubyans, like Ramzia Hassan Abu Dhais remembered that they Arab Salvation Army had told them: 'Leave for two weeks, then you can come back.' “We took nothing with us when we left Lubya,” Yousef Issa told me. “I had to sell my gun in order to survive.”
Um Tal'at and her family “left Palestine with only a few liras. We were, after all, a family of five. My sons were 4, 3 and 1 years old. UNRWA managed to give each one of us 1½ kgs of flour. My brother-in-law registered with the Agency as having been born in Nu’aymi. The other brother, Muhammad, registered as a policeman, while my husband became mukhtar. Later on, my husband succeeded in finding work as a guard in Khao, a Jordanian town until Fawzi Hassan gave him work in Dayr ‘Alla in the Jordan valley, where he worked for fifteen consecutive years.”
Some, like Abu Tal'at, were lucky enough to have extended family or friends who were able to help them out. “[My father Mahmoud Husayn] came here in order to be closer to Lubya when it was time to go back,” Abu Tal'at told me. “In Nu’aymi, we lived with the Samadi family whom we had known for fifty years. We changed our name to theirs. Our relatives, al-Samadiyya in Nu’aymi, were very generous to us, especially in offering us food, shelter and other facilities. Later on I found work and we moved to Irbid where we have lived ever since.”
Um Tal'at had similar recollections of their arrival in Jordan. “Our men met with friends from al-Nu’aymi, and together about twenty people in all went to their village near Irbid. They told us that according to Arab traditions and customs, guests are welcome to stay for three days, and only after those are over can their host ask them about their urgent needs. Before long they managed to find us a house and stock it with all the necessities, such as food, coffee etc. They also did all what they could to ensure that we were comfortable in our new accommodations. Some of us also stayed about one year as guests of the mukhtar, and during that time no one was allowed to leave the house without having breakfast.”
In some places of exile, however, it was not long before the initial welcome and assistance of the local population faded. In ‘Anjar, which had been an initial place of refuge for many of the refugees spilling across the border in 1948, problems with the local Armenian population who had representatives in the Lebanese parliament and city councils forced some refugees, like Amina's family, to pick up their few belongings and move once again. “The Lebanese authorities at one point broke my uncle’s hand and tried to run over Abu Thyab with a truck,” she said. “So we had to move again, this time to Dayr Tinail, a nearby village.”
This was only one in a series of moves the family made in search of security during the first years of exile. “We lived in Dayr Tinail in tents for a while before picking up again and moving to ‘Ayn al-Hilwe camp in south Lebanon. There was not enough food there for everyone, so we moved to al-Bus camp. Problems arose there also, however, between people from the camp and the military authorities, so we finally moved to Burj al-Shamali camp where we finally built a house and settled down for good.”
Ahmad Hassan Ibrahim and his family who also ended up in Burj al-Shamali camp in south Lebanon stayed in the camp until the civil war broke out in the country in September 1969. “We were badly treated by the Lebanese police for the duration of our stay,” said Ahmad. “I rented a space to open a barber shop, but when I attempted to repair the walls which were in a poor state the police came and fined me 100 liras. At that time one lira was worth a lot.”
Refugees faced similar problems with local inhabitants in other countries of exile. In Jordan, Um Tal'at told me a story about how “a Pasha from the Hindawi family was killed in Nu’aymi by a Palestinian from al-Mujaydil. The people of the village began to speak ill of the Palestinians. ‘Tomorrow we shall kill Saleh al-Ali as he has killed the Pasha,’ they said, referring to a Palestinian from the village. We began to hear one negative story after the other. Two of our men went to UNRWA and asked them to find us a safe place because of all what was being said against the Palestinians.”
“The next day, while we were preparing to move to Irbid and my husband was out of the house, the wife of the mukhtar came over and asked me to stay. They were really very generous people, but I told her that I had to move with my family, and with those of Mousa and Suleiman ‘Ayid. She really tried her best to make us stay but I wanted to be with people who knew my past and understood my fears. We, the four families, collected all our belongings, put them on the back of the bus and drove to Irbid. When my husband returned from work, he became angry at me for leaving Nu’aymi.”
“They gave us a tent with three poles (jamallion). We lived in it for fifteen years until all our men found jobs in different places in Jordan. We then began, with help from UNRWA, to build walls and ceilings to replace the tent. My older son Tal’at had to leave school to help my husband at work and was very sorry to cut short his studies. Later on my husband opened his own shop, and another son, Rif’at, went to Germany and worked there for three years. Our economic situation thus began to improve after many years of living in poverty.”
Inside Israel, even those refugees from Lubya and other villages that managed to stay after the war were not safe. In many places, refugees were rounded up and deported across the armistice lines. “When the Israeli officer came and asked me why I was in Dayr Hanna,” said Abu Hassan, “I did not tell him the truth. I only told him that I went there before the clashes started because I didn’t want to buy weapons for the revolutionaries. Other members of our family were rounded up by the Jewish police and expelled to the West Bank.”
Similar episodes took place in Palestinian villages across the country. “One hundred and fifty people remained in Saffuriyya [close to Lubya] after 1948 for about one year and obtained identity cards that mentioned their birthplace as Saffuriyya,” Abu Nimr told me. His mother was from Lubya, and it is there that he had spent most of his childhood before the Nakba. “Then the Israeli army warned the people to evacuate the village within forty-eight hours. After that it remained empty for two years, during which, I believe, we still had a chance of returning. We missed a good opportunity to stay in our village especially because most of the Israeli governments at that time were politically left. After two years, however, the settlers began to arrive in Saffuriyya.”
Political activity
The uprooting of Palestinians from their homes and villages and their expulsion to the different corners of the world brought about new forms of social organization. Patterns of social organization in the refugee camps were radically different than those in the village. The authority of the mukhtar and the head of the hamula was weakened but not obliterated. Those refugees who were able began to organize politically in the different areas of exile to return to their homeland.
In most places of exile where the majority of refugees were living, however, Palestinians who attempted to engage in politics faced hard times. The situation in Lebanon was particularly severe where there was an almost total prohibition on any political activity what so ever. In the 1960s when I tried to arrange a peaceful demonstration in our secondary school, I remember being put in a toilet as a prisoner, until demonstrators from Baalbek came to the camp and the police were obliged to free me.
In Syria there was more opportunity for Palestinians to be involved in politics. Refugees in Jordan were allowed to work openly for a limited period, but most of the time it was forbidden. Inside Israel, the Palestinian population that remained was placed under military rule until 1966. After the 1967 war and the defeat of the Arab states, and especially after the 1968 Karama battle in Jordan, however, Palestinian refugees, including those from Lubya, openly joined the armed struggle for independence. “We realized one fact,” said Muhammad Abu Dhais, another son of the mukhtar of Lubya, “that the land that was occupied by power could not be liberated without power.”
The founding of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964 provided a new form of social organization bringing the individual, family and tribe under the broad umbrella of the Palestinian nation. Between 1965 and 1982, ninety-three refugees from Lubya who participated in the national struggle were killed. The vast majority of those Lubyans who died in the national struggle to liberate and return to their homeland were young people. They were born outside Palestine. They had never seen Lubya. Their local identity was reformulated through their experiences in the modern revolutionary organizations.
According to Yousef Abu Dhais, the first man killed in the first operation of the modern revolution was from Lubya. “We Lubyans participated actively in the revolution from the beginning,” said Ahmad Hassan Ibrahim who continued naming those who had died in the struggle. “Sa’id Shar’an was the leader of al-‘Arkoub contingent in 1971, the year of his death, and Abu Mahmoud Mustafa was one of the first leaders to help the martyr Abu Ali Iyad [a prominent leader of Fatah who died in Jordan in 1971] in al-Hami Camp in Syria.”
Several men from the elderly generation that I spoke with recounted their involvement in the Palestinian struggle in exile. Yousef Abu Dhais (Abu Bassam), for example, established Munathamat al-Shabiba (the Palestinian Youth Organisation) in 1952. He later became one of the founding members of the Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Palestine ( PFLP). In 1964, he joined the Fatah organisation. When I visited Abu Bassam in Homs refugee camp in Syria, he took out all the cards that proved his participation in many of the meetings of the Palestine National Council (PNC).
“I was contacted by Muhammad Zuhdi al-Nashashibi, who was then a member of our organisation, and asked to attend the National Council meeting. An officer from the Jarboo’ family from Tira, Yousef ‘Orabi, Ahmad Jibril, representing PFLP and Abu Jihad, representing Fatah, were also in attendance. The meeting started with an attack on the PLO because it had been established with support from Arab Governments. I raised my hand to speak and I told them that the decision to attack the PLO was wrong.”
“I also told them that the Palestinian people now had a small umbrella to gather under after being out in the open since our exile from Palestine. We should be careful not to lose the trust of the people. We are nine organisations gathered here that should unite into one. This would also be an apt response to the establishment of the PLO. My suggestion was accepted, and a committee composed of four people, Muhammad al-Nashashibi, Kaddora, Ahmad Jibril and Abu Jihad, was established to discuss the question of unity among the organisations. After three days, however, there was still no agreement. Only Fatah, our organisation, and two others from al-Fida’iyeen Brigade had agreed.”
“Another committee of four people took over the responsibility to start the armed struggle in Palestine and we promptly started planning our first operation, which was to be against the refinery installation in Haifa. Yousef ‘Orabi took overall responsibility for the operation because he was trained as an officer in the Syrian army. The operation was supposed to consist of shelling the refinery with fifty-one shells then withdrawing back to Jenin, but the operation was cancelled when the man we sent to Jordan to buy weapons was captured. The next operation took place in al-Battof. Ahmad Mousa became the first martyr of the modern revolution. I knew him personally from Lubya. He used to live in al-Hima and was originally from the al-Dalayki Arabs.”
“The Syrians gave us a military training camp following an agreement we reached with the 8th March Movement in 1963. Yousef ‘Orabi (from ‘Akka), Ahmad Hajjo, Mustafa Sa’d al-Din, Mujahid Sarhan and Kassam Dakhl Allah joined our organization al-Jabha al-Thawriyya (Revolutionary Front). Ahmad Hajjo became the leader of the training camp, to be replaced later by another colleague. This was the extent to which we succeeded in putting our plans into action, and the revolution went onwards from that point. I then moved to South Lebanon where I worked with Abu Ali Iyad.”
One of the primary topics of Abu Bassam’s book, Lubya, al-Ard wa al-Sha’b [Lubya, the Land and the People], concerns those who died in the 1965 revolution. It took Abu Bassam almost two years to collect all their names. “I forgot many names, and there are of course many shortcomings in the book, but I did my best. Many people phoned me to remind me of names I had forgotten. Others wanted me to write personal stories about them as heroes, but I wanted to write a book about Lubya and not about individual people. There were those who did not die on the battlefield killed by the enemy. Therefore, I did not mention them and a few people got angry. I did not include any information that was not officially documented and it was better to talk about Lubyans as a whole.”
“We were optimistic when the revolution took over,” said Amina Ali Ismael. “I even tried to send them food, but they refused, saying that they had enough. In the beginning, the revolution was powerful and promising, but later our situation became very difficult and we felt let down by them.”
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